Summary
The 2nd anniversary of Space Engineers release is upon us, so for this week we prepared a meaty update. It features new improvements, fixes and requested features such as the new slide doors that allows players to walk (fly) through the door at any angle. We also adjusted the behavior of small and large ship batteries. Batteries can be charged and provide energy at the same time, so players can always have stand-by batteries that are charged if energy is available, but also give energy automatically when needed.
Another important change to mention is switching off the thruster override 10x power for inertial dampeners, so all ships will behave differently now.
Additionally, we implemented the superconductor, a new component needed in the most valuable blocks such as the jumpdrive, artificial mass, laser antennas or large reactors. Moreover, the small ship cockpit has a conveyor in front of it.

In this week’s update we are also introducing hydrogen along with hydrogen thrusters, hydrogen tanks and hydrogen bottles as another feature preparing the game world for the upcoming release of Planets. Please bear in mind that this is the first iteration but we decided to implement it to the game now as a small gift to you for the game’s second anniversary.
We also implemented new improvements to the multiplayer and preparing the game for the roll-out of new features and updates to the multiplayer in coming weeks. And if the new improvements are not your cup of tea you can return to the previous version of multiplayer without the new additions on the Beta Tab in the Space Engineers properties in Steam client. There might be some problems here and there, so please report them back at our bug report section: http://forum.keenswh.com/forums/bug-reports.326950

Battery guide
From now on all newly built batteries will start at 30% of maximum charge and the power cell components will turn to scrap metal when grinding down a battery block to balance this change. Also, batteries have four states (none, recharge only, discharge only, semi-auto):
- when battery is not set to either recharge or discharge, it will allow both input and output, meaning it will recharge if there is surplus power on the grid, and discharge if there is not enough power otherwise
- when set to recharge, it will only allow input
- when set to discharge, it will only allow output
- when set to semi-auto, it will alternate between recharge and discharge like before

Hydrogen guide
Hydrogen thrusters are stronger than the current ion ones but they require hydrogen fuel pumped by conveyor system in order to function. Oxygen generator is now generating hydrogen along oxygen from ice. Hydrogen thrusters will be the most efficient way to leave the planet’s atmosphere, or to quickly accelerate in a fight, but need a large tank, fuel, and a conveyor connection. You also need to use hydrogen to power the jetpack now by hydrogen stored in bottles in player’s inventory. The jetpack will consume more hydrogen in high-gravity environments. We have also added the ability for modders to create custom fuels and custom thrusters that require the fuel.

Inertial dampeners change explanation
Previous state of things would make flight in natural gravity and leaving the atmosphere too easy. Inertial dampeners now have the same strength as player inputs and ships will always behave depending on their thrusters -so if you build only one small thruster facing forward, you will be stopping the ship longer. Small ships have still 5x power for dampeners to make them more agile compared to large ships. We also opened a possibility to mod thrust override, so community can experiment with their own settings or put old settings back if they liked it more. Please tell us what you think about this large change in our feedback forum section: http://forum.keenswh.com/forums/feedback.423142/

Steam beta branch switching guide
To access the Beta branch, go into game properties, Beta tab, and select the old build named "old_multiplayer" to opt in. There is no password needed.

Update
- fixed crash when connecting to the game
- fixed crash with destroying voxels
- fixed crash when character was changing suit
- fixed crash with rotors and pistons
- fixed crash when merging grids
- fixed crash with oxygen
- fixed turrets always using conveyor system even when set to off

Wow holy cow great update guys! This is probably the best bug fixing update yet. Some really exciting features here. I wish you would elaborate more on the fixes though and give us some more details other that vaguely saying:
- multiplayer improvements
- rotor performance improvements
- fixed performance issues in Havok

I mean the Thrusters are great and the new Doors are really great but... who the hell thought the Inertial Dampener-change was a good idea? It'll not only break existing ships it's also going to make new ones really, really ugly. Decidedly not a fan. Also not sure why the still-blue Jetpack now needs another bottle; aren't Survival players hauling around enough already?